I feel like the name of this blog should be “Everything takes longer than you think.” Chris started this woodworking project as a side project, and sure enough, it took several months to complete. Not that it was that hard. But after starting it and doing the bulk of the work, other work around the house needed more urgent attention. Basically, 70% of it was done within a few weeks and the remaining 30% took another 2 months to complete. But the DIY dining table is finally, finally, 100% DONE.

And we love it.

It’s so amazing to see an awesome piece of furniture come from just a concept like this:

To an in-progress project like this:

To finally, this:

We did change a few things along the way. We added the cross beams at the top of the legs, which I think give it a modern pseudo-Asian feel and also make the table feel more substantial.

Sorry about the mess of boxes and tools. I wanted to show this to you guys and didn’t have time to make everything look perfect. I only have about 30 min before the baby wakes up!

Chris spent so much time planing the wood (it’s construction grade lumber, so he evened it out and squared it off using a planer) and fitting it all together tightly. This really was a labor of love for him =).

We finished it off with Minwax Special Walnut stain (my fave!) and a coat of Varathane Spar Poly on the top. I was originally trying to finish the table with Minwax fast-drying Polyurethane but I was getting some weird gray patches on the legs (probably my can of poly was too old) so I switched to Spar Poly for the top.

People disagree on whether spar poly is good for dining tables (it’s used on ships and has more give/flex than regular Poly), but it’s just what I had. I think it looks wonderful and if it dents easier than regular poly, I don’t really mind.

Dents just add “character” anyway ;p.

I can’t wait to get the living/dining room cleaned up and styled. The Goodwill chairs I found that I recovered will be living here. I also need to get some window treatments up over the sliding door that we added. MAYBE everything will be ready by Thanksgiving? No guarantees though. Everything takes longer than you think.

we built our dining room table and it wasn’t completely finished for oh, almost a year:) in fact i had to re-sand and stain parts since we had been using it without it being sealed. oh well:) totally part of the DIY lifestyle!!! loooove the look of yours!

Hi Dan,
Unfortunately we don’t have plans for this table yet. Chris kind of made it up as he went along. I’ll post updates when we’ve got plans ready for it (we have preliminary sketches but not full-on plans with measurements, etc…).

Hi Karla! We used construction-grade doug fir, but Chris planed it down using his grandpa’s planer (which got rid of the rounded corners) and sanded it really well with a belt sander. I wish I had plans for this but we’ve been so busy we haven’t had time to sit down and draw them up lately! Hope that helps!
Camilla

I am so sorry, but we are not going to be able to offer plans for this table. First of all, it was not a simple project, and secondly, my husband kind of measured and made it up as he went. Also, we planed our wood down, so the wood pieces are not standard measurements. At this point, making plans is more complex than we want to tackle. Sorry!

Very Nice looking table. Looks like you used some kind of rendering program to design it. Any way to send a copy to me and/or post some plans? I’d really like to attempt this one, but i need a little more than the pics on this post. Thanks in advance!

Hi! As I’ve mentioned before, we don’t have plans for this table yet — Chris just kind of made it up as he went along. We did a preliminary design in Google Sketchup but it changed quite a bit before it was done. We are planning to provide better illustrations in the future when we have time, but we have so many projects going on right now I can’t guarantee when that will be! Sorry! Thanks for your feedback; we’ll try to get on it as soon as we can!

This looks very nice! I am actually half way through building a table just like this (at least the top is the same design – legs are different). I have been studying and learning a lot about wood and was wondering what he did to relieve stress caused by shrinkage if anything? Did you finish all the way around the top including the bottom? Have you had any issues with warping or cracking since this was built?

I am curious about all of that because I just learned more about the properties of wood shrinkage and my table top is already built (made of white fir) and I dont want to redo it! thanks for posting this!

Yes, I think the sofa-back table would look good going all across the window, and then the expeosed part could be accessible storage. In fact, the space behind the ssofa could be made into storage for your lobster-pot or other large, infrequently used items.

They are 4x10s that are cut on an angle and planed down. Sorry we don’t have exact measurements for this piece (we planed down all the lumber and just kind of winged it…not necessarily recommended, but it worked for us).